


The Adventures of Anthony: In Technicolor!

by alpacas



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 10:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacas/pseuds/alpacas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Anthony's parents <i>really</i> loved him, he'd have gotten a red bike for his birthday, he's sure, and tells them so over dinner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adventures of Anthony: In Technicolor!

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [and time takes me away.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/607633) by [alpacas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacas/pseuds/alpacas). 



> look, i can remix fanfics based on my own fanfics if i want!

The very worst thing in Anthony's life is that his best friend Jimmy's birthday is the week after his, and for  _his_ birthday, his parents bought him the coolest red bike Anthony has ever seen. It has speeds, and a bell, and there are baseball cards pinned to the spokes to make them rattle. If Anthony's parents  _really_ loved him, he'd have gotten a red bike too, he's sure, and tells them so over dinner.

"Anthony," his mom says, in her  _don't you dare_ voice, the one she uses when he's about to be in trouble. His dad makes a face into his chicken that means he's noticed it too. "You got a  _perfectly good_ camera for your birthday."

He knows. He likes his camera. He has already used—wasted, in his dad's words—three rolls of film pretending their cat is a lion and he's a wilderness explorer like in National Geographic. He filled another roll on his birthday trip. But it's not a  _bike_. "My real mom and dad would get me a bike," he protests, looking at his mashed potatoes. He's not sure how this argument will play out. It makes him feel nervous just saying it. Anthony found out he was adopted three years ago when he turned five. At first he'd have bad dreams like he wouldn't get to live with his mom and dad anymore and people would take him away, but now he's pretty sure his real dad is Superman, who had to give him away because a baby would make it hard to fight crime. His mom laughed when he asked her and said  _how did you know?_ , and his dad sighed and made a face and said  _wouldn't that be cool_? So Anthony's pretty sure he's right.

"You got a birthday trip," his dad reminds him. "Jimmy's never been to 13th century China."

 

* * *

 

He tells this to Jimmy the next day while they're walking to school, Jimmy pushing his bike between them: "For my birthday, I went to China." 

For a couple of seconds, Jimmy looks like he believes Anthony, but then he scoffs. "No you didn't! You didn't go to China!"

"I did!" Anthony says. His parents said he can't take the photos out of the house, but he wishes he'd snuck one to school with him anyway. They're plastered all over the walls of his bedroom—along with cut outs from National Geographic, and his zoological photos of the cat—and he keeps begging for a colour camera to make them better. "I saw the Khan, and Marco Polo." 

"That's just a stupid game," Jimmy says. "How did you get to China?"

"My big sister took me." She'd also told him about the Khan and what a Khan was, and that Marco Polo was real and not just a game. 

"You don't have a big sister!" Jimmy says. "You're a liar!" Anthony keeps his mouth shut, because he knows saying  _I do, she just lives on the moon in the future_ doesn't sound very true. He'd tried it before when he was a little kid.

 

* * *

 

 

The other reason Anthony knows his real dad is Superman is because his big sister is a superhero. She lives on the moon in the future, and she looks the same age as his parents instead of just teenage like all of his friends's older brothers and sisters, even Jackson who has a brother in the army who is twenty-two. She visits for Christmas and birthdays, and every year since Anthony was six, she's taken him somewhere for his birthday, straight out of his adventure comics: Persia, deepest Africa, and now China. They go together, just the two of them. River tells him all sorts of things, stuff he can't even remember, and they drink tea and see fancy carpets and ride camels. A normal big sister couldn't do that. He thinks River is about the coolest person on the planet.

But just like any superhero, River has to maintain her secret identity. He can't tell anyone about her—and no one ever believes him anyway, because he's tried, because it's cool and he'd be the  _coolest kid in school_ if his friends knew. So when Jimmy calls him a liar, Anthony takes a deep breath and counts to five like his dad taught him, and doesn't hit him or kick his bike. 

 

* * *

 

 

In school, they're learning about geography. Mrs Wilson talks about how Hawaii wants to be a state, just like New York, and what that means. Anthony imagines going to Hawaii and riding elephants through the jungle for his birthday next year. He imagines going to the moon and seeing River's secret base. He even briefly imagines visiting Britain, where his parents are from, but that'd be boring. Antarctica, India, fighting Commies in Russia, Japan, Thailand, Australia, the Amazon, the Nile, the past, the future… the moon, the sun, the stars. He has a mobile in his room from when he was a baby, and it's embarrassing and he hides it when he has friends over, but when he turns it on, instead of light shining though cut holes, it's a real  _galaxy_. He remembers sitting in his mom's lap when he was little, four or five, while she taught him the names of the planets and stars. He could find Martians, or Krypton, or Atlantis, or Troy. Mrs Wilson calls on him and Anthony has no idea what she's been talking about. His face burns when she scolds him, and he tries to pay attention, but soon he's imagining meeting cowboys and indians for  _real._

* * *

_  
_

After dinner, they watch the _Lone Ranger_ , and then Anthony's parents let him stay up while they watch  _You Bet Your Life._ He doesn't really follow it, and he thinks it's a little boring, but he doesn't want to go to bed yet. He slumps into the sofa, half asleep, listening to the host chat with the couple with one ear and his parents talking with the other. The couple on television are talking about how they met. His parents are talking about his mom's editor. He lists into his dad's side, and a few second's later his dad's hand comes up, rests on his head. Anthony thinks he's probably too old for this, but he closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep so that no one knows he's letting it happen. Jimmy's dad once said his dad was "soft", which is probably because he's British (even if his mom is the  _opposite_ of that and also British), but Anthony doesn't really mind it sometimes, like now. Even if his real family are superheroes, and not a writer of books about girls and a nurse which is a girl job, and British, and kind of old, and won't buy him a red bike, he doesn't really mind them. Groucho Marx asks the couple on TV how many tines are on a fork, and his parents start to argue about that. Four, no, five, are you insane, what kind of forks have five tines, maybe it's three—only dessert forks, Rory, are you being stupid on purpose—

Anthony drifts off to sleep, his dad stroking his hair, and dreams about being a general and meeting Cleopatra, like the Anthony he was named after, and then he and Cleopatra find an oasis in the desert with buried treasure, and he takes photos of it and pins them to his red bike so they rattle as he rides. 


End file.
